The TOM-TOM © and I

It was a short-lived relationship, barely an hour, but less than fifteen minutes into it, and my trusty companion wasn't speaking to me anymore.

During our vacation, recently, I had the occasion to drive my son's Jeep from the resort to the little store some five miles away.

For those of you unfamiliar with the area around the Ozarks of Southern Missouri and Northern Arkansas, let's just say that navigating the roadways is often a challenge.

Not to worry, though, on this outing I had the trusty TOM-TOM ^© along to guide me.

I had never used one of these devices before, usually preferring to get lost on my own. I had always relied on the maps that defy folding or the use of an online mapping tool's printouts to further enhance the sensation of being utterly lost in my travels.  I'm told it's "part of the fun", but have yet to find it anything other than annoying.  I guess "lost-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-adventurer" wasn't on the list of options when I was made, or else I was busy getting the "can't-live-without-chocolate" option installed at the time and missed the opportunity.  Whatever the reason, I want to know how to get from point A to point B without having to go through Upper Mongolia every time.  Call me crazy.

With the advent of these newfangled navigation systems, you'd think I'd have been in line to buy the first ones as they came rolling off the assembly line.  That's where the "I'm-not-paying-$400-for-a-talking-navigator" option I did have installed kicked in, and I never took the plunge.

Which is why I as so excited to try out my son's talking navigator.  I'd been ever so curious, but had never seen one in action before.

Not knowing how to make it tell me how to get from point A (the resort) to point B (the store), my daughter-in-law programmed it for me, and showed me the simple touch screen commands to use.  It really is a marvelously simple machine.

It's also temperamental and gets its feelings hurt...easily.

As I started out, I realized that my d-I-l had not programmed the outbound portion of the trip.  She'd programmed the return, since I seemed to have a fairly good grasp of how to get where I was going and was a little fuzzy on the coming back....it's complicated...it's Arkansas...there are unmarked roads everywhere....sigh...just trust me....

As I left the resort, TOM-TOM ^©, kept telling me I had reached my destination.  Ignoring it, I kept driving.  As we passed one dirt road after another, the navigator kept pleading with me to "turn around" or "turn left/right".   I continued to ignore it.

Finally, it gave up.  It stopped speaking to me.  Not only that, but on the return trip, where I was following the correct directions it didn't give me a single vocal prompt.  Not one.  If I hadn't looked down at the screen to verify my position I might have kept going until I got to Little Rock.

The tension in the Jeep was thick as a knife as I drove along in silence.  I refused to apologize for failing to follow the navigator's original instructions and it refused to help me anymore.